I20 The Poets Beasts. 



its meekness arises from condescension rather than submis- 

 sion ; that it prefers to subject itself to perennial crucifixion 

 rather than tediously prove its patents to nobility. Legend 

 says it bears the cross upon its back to keep men in recol- 

 lection of the exaltation of the humble to offices of honour, 

 and that its meekness is to remind us that even under such 

 honours we should still remain humble.^ But legend is 

 often audaciously wrong. For when our Saviour went into 

 Jerusalem on an ass, He selected the beast upon which it 

 was then considered most honourable to ride. The donkey 

 was — as it still is — the steed of the rich, the high in place, 

 and the luxurious. There was no humility intended or ex- 

 pressed in that notable procession ; on the contrary, it was 

 our Saviour's one and only assertion of personal conse- 

 quence. His solitary condescension to the earthly ambitions 

 of the disciples. Moreover, viewed naturally instead of 

 traditionally, the cross-stripe on the donkey's back gives 

 the "heavy-headed thing" a very interesting significance, 

 for it may be the last lingering vestige of a zebrine ancestry. 

 All the other stripes have been thrashed off its hide. Be- 

 wildered by ill-usage, they have run together and blended 

 into a colour that, like the character of the wearer, is mono- 

 tonous, dull, serious, solemn. I prefer then the natural and 

 matter-of-fact explanation of the emblem on the donkey's 

 back to the legendary one, for it directly associates the poor 

 animal with its proud wild-life past, and by a single line of 

 colour suffices to restore " the heavy, stupid, lumpish thing " 

 of the poets to its original Asiatic and African honours and 

 freedom. 



*' Didst thou from service the wild ass discharge, 

 And break his bonds, and bid him live at large ; 

 Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, 

 And lose himself in his unbounded home ? 



^ In Scotland, they say the stripe is the bruise of Balaam's staff. 



